"Yes."
I walk her to the bedroom. I take her robe out of the closet. It is mine. Gray. Soft from washing. I hold it open. She steps in. I close it around her. I tie the belt.
"Sit by the stove," I say. "I'll make tea. Then I'll talk."
She puts her hand on the lapel of my henley.
"Max."
"Yes."
"Don't say sorry for any of the things you're going to say."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Don't sound like you're sorry, either. I want this.”
"I won’t,” I say.
"I don't want you to be careful with me. Not in the way that means small. I want you careful with me in the way that means you looked at me first."
"Heard."
"Okay."
She goes to the stove.
I stand waiting a half count after she's gone. I put my hand flat on the side. I let my eyes close. The scar on my forearm hums. My mouth is dry. The pulse in my throat is going the way it was going in the armchair.
I am going to take this beautiful woman to bed tonight.
I am going to do it well.
I am going to do it the way I have never done anything with anybody in my life, because I want her more than I have ever wanted anyone.
I go to the kitchen. I go make tea.
10
EVANGELINE
We drink the tea across the stove from each other.
Max sits on the floor in front of the woodstove in a dark henley and dark jeans, her legs out, her boots off, her back against the sofa. She is gorgeous in the most handsome masculine way with her dark hair a little falling forward over her face. I sit in the armchair with the robe pulled around me and my knees up under it. The light in the living room is amber from the stove glass and gold from the single lamp. The rain has started again, very light, on the cedar of the roof.
She talks.
“OK, I’m just going to say some things and I want you to say yes or no. Whichever answer feels right for you, I just want you to say it. And if its more complicated than yes or no I want to hear anything that runs through your mind.”
I nod. I wonder what she is going to say. I don’t have much sexual experience. My list of lovers before my husband was brief and forgettable. Sex with my husband was forgettable. I have never been with a woman.
But I am turned on. Really turned on by her. By the idea of her.
“My hands and fingers on your body and inside your pussy,” she says first beginning the list that is living in her head.
I nod. I feel wet just thinking about it.
“I need you to say it,” she says.
